Minion Remembers
by joanhello
Summary: Minion is older than Megamind. What does he remember of their people and life on their homeworld?


What do I remember of the homeworld? Mainly I remember the house with the big aquarium at the center of it. The aquarium was a story tall and maybe ten yards by seven, and when everybody was home, it was pretty full. But most of the time it was just me and my tutor living in it. No, it wasn't normal to have a tutor, but I was a clone, so I only had one parent and he was away most of the time with the boss's dad. I had lessons and there were screens built into one side of the aquarium that had touch controls in the water, so I could get into the library on my own. So even though I only ever left home a few times, I had a pretty good education about the world. And most of that world disappeared. The only things I was taught that turned out to be useful were the technology and the physiology. How to build stuff and how to keep myself and the boss alive.

There was another wall of the aquarium that looked right out into the air-breathers' living area, where the air breathers and water breathers could converse eye to eye. At the top of the aquarium, there was open water and around the edge were slings and stairs and jets and floating furniture and stuff, for when the air breathers wanted to get in. The only air breather who lived there full time was the boss' mom. In the living areas she'd sometimes have guests, usually her colleagues from work, and I'd get to listen in on some high level neuroscience talk that I hardly understood at all, but only family ever got in the water, and most of the time that meant just her. When she was pregnant, she'd sit in the water up to her neck to take the load off her feet and she'd let me sit on her belly. I practically worshiped her. She was severed, you know. Lost her fish companion when she was young, and sometimes I think she liked to pretend I was hers. But we both knew I wasn't. I was for the baby that was coming.

My cloneparent and the boss' dad came home for the birth. They brought something the boss' dad was tinkering with, like always. This time it was a little surveillance unit, basically a spybot. They set up the operating theater and recovery space in a room with an aquarium wall so my cloneparent and I could see him born. I was so excited, I couldn't float still, and I was also kind of freaked out. I mean, a Caesarean is scary to a little kid of any species. I'd feel like I couldn't look, and then like I had to look, and I'd hide my eyes (usually by swimming behind my cloneparent) and then I'd peek out from behind. Then there he was, this little wrinkled purple thing smeared in blood, and he opened his eyes and looked at me and the world stopped. That's what that moment is like. His mom kept him in that room for three days, so we could bond, and I don't remember a minute of it, except his eyes.

As soon as I was able to break away enough to eat something, she told me she was gonna give me my mod the next day. Now, if I'd been a little older, I'd have wondered. She's gonna do surgery four days after she had a baby? And I'm only seven years old. The normal age to get modified was ten. But when you tell a kid that age you're going to do something to him that'll make it possible for him to pilot a spacecraft when he grows up, all he's gonna think about is being a space pilot and how cool it's gonna be.

I remember she picked me up out of the aquarium and put me in the surgery unit that kept the top of my head above the surface. I started to fuzz out from the anaesthetics in the water and I noticed that she was sad.

The next thing I knew, I was back in the aquarium in a recovery sling. I think she must have enhanced me when she did the mod, because I could figure out that things weren't right. I couldn't hear the recirculator. My cloneparent was there with me, fanning the water with his fins so I'd get oxygen. But it wasn't a power failure; the lights were still on. As soon as I could talk, I asked him what was going on. That's when he told me about the planet being about to be destroyed. He said the boss' dad was converting the spybot into a life pod for me and the baby and he'd needed the recirculator for the life support system.

He told me the name of the planet we'd be going to and asked me what I remembered about it from my lessons. The answer was, not much, so he did a little review with me. He kept talking about what I needed to know, about the responsibility. I finally stopped him and said, You're all going to die, aren't you?

Fish don't cry, not in the sense that air breathers cry, but we have a thing that we do that means the same thing, when there's too much sadness to use words. Then we used some words. We said we loved each other. We said goodbye. Somewhere along in there he started helping me move around the tank. In a few hours I was swimming on my own. Then he said it was time. We went to the surface. He had the mech dump him into his suit. I got into a globe and the mech sealed it, lifted it out of the water and dried it. He took me and met the boss and his mom in the flyer. During the flight over, the boss' mom and I said goodbye, and she did cry.

We landed on the sidewalk in front of the small launch building. The grown-ups took us little ones and sprinted inside. The boss' dad was there waiting with the pod all set up for launch. He got the boss settled in. Then he put me inside in my globe and I remember those words: "He will take care of you." He meaning me. I felt tiny. I felt hopelessly inadequate. I turned around and he was saying something, closing the lid down, and he was smiling. He had confidence in me! I was six inches long, the top of my head was still sore from the new mod, which I was going to have nobody to teach me how to use, and he had confidence in me. When the pod launched, I was still wondering whether he was the craziest sentient being on the planet or whether he knew something I didn't.


End file.
